


The Writing on the Wall

by hops



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, this was supposed to be all angst but it's more so heartwarming in the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-14
Updated: 2017-06-14
Packaged: 2018-11-13 23:11:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11195436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hops/pseuds/hops
Summary: Taako has a moment of self-loathing and self-doubt after his umbra staff emblazons "LUP" onto the wall at Angus' magic lesson. Magnus rushes in at a most inconvenient moment.(Set in the middle of ep 40, Lunar Interlude III. Spoilers for The Stolen Century if you squint.)





	The Writing on the Wall

**Author's Note:**

> I like to think that Magnus is more of an empath than he lets on. I also like to make Taako cry. And I also love how extra Griffin is about foreshadowing with the umbra staff. Why not combine all three!

Taako lay on his back, sprawled across his bed spread-eagle and staring at the ceiling. He recounted the scene of Angus running off babbling about another mystery to solve after their magic lesson; the umbra staff, yet again, seemed to have a mind of its own. He was only grateful it had incinerated the boy's macarons and the wall and not... well, not himself, or the boy. But what did that word mean? "L-U-P." The flames flickering out and giving way to a charred imprint on the wall were carved into his mind. What the  _fuck_ did that word mean?  

He sighed and rolled onto his side, looking at the staff. It was closed tightly, leaning against the wall next to the door. He was almost afraid to touch it.  _Maybe the Red Robe in the cave was pissed that he touched it,_ he mused.  _Maybe it was cursed. Maybe it stood for something...._  

He stared, waiting for it to move. Waiting for it to write something else, quite literally, on the wall. And as he looked at the staff, he felt inexplicably alone.  

Feeling alone wasn't new for Taako. Not foreign or unfamiliar. Not anything he wasn't already accustomed to. He'd spent years of his childhood alone, then as a young adult, drifting, cooking, learning, always among many but never with anyone he  _cared_ for. Even now, with people he could consider closest to best friends he could ever remember having, he still felt.... lonely.  

He rolled over onto his other side and stared out the rounded window, past the rest of the moon's visible campus and out at the eternal blackness littered with stars. He considered depression, of course. That nagging, empty feeling in the pit of his stomach. The fear that he was never good enough. The dual desires inside of him for everyone's attention and to be completely anonymous at the same time. The way he was never quite honest about how he felt. The small pang of jealousy in his gut when Magnus so easily talked about his feelings. All this had been pushed to the back of his mind while they were on the hunt for the relics. Not that he minded. Taako welcomed the distraction with wide-open arms; the less he thought about his feelings, the better.  

It was these long weeks at the Bureau that got to him. No distractions, no excuses, nothing to occupy his time other than magic lessons or training or mediocre mess hall food. And even those things were starting to lose him.  

He shut his eyes.  _Maybe a nap will help,_  he reasoned, but there was the same image, carved into his lids just as it'd been carved into the wall. LUP. His eyes snapped open. Sighing in frustration, he sat up quickly and tried to catch his breath, but a lump in his throat kept him from doing so.  

_"Fuck,"_ he muttered. "Not now."  

Taako hated crying. No matter how many times Magnus had told him that a good cry helped with stress now and again, he  _hated_ crying. He hated how it made him feel, (exhausted and shaky), and he hated how it made him  _look,_ (puffy, red, and undignified.) But sometimes, all he could do was turn away from the mirror and ride it out. Lucas' lab had been hard on them, after all...  

He liked to pretend that's what this was about. The physical stress of the mission. The taxing nature of their work. But something more had bothered him about their time amongst the crystals that he couldn't quite name. Something about watching Kravitz leave with Lucas' mother. Something about the way she told him she would see him again.  

Something about Magnus asking Kravitz to deliver a message to his deceased wife.  

Something about missing the dead.  

Taako thumped back down onto the mattress, slowly untying his braid as tears began to stream down the sides of his face and onto his neck. He felt as though a piece of him had died, maybe. He didn't know when or where, but he knew that it was gone. In its place was a black hole he had tried to fill with cooking, with clothes, with magic, with humor, with work, with wine, with ignoring its presence altogether. And still, it sat, devouring him in its extra-slow motion. More like a decay than a vortex. He wondered if someday he'd be nothing at all, if it kept on.  

He dwelled on how he'd thrown himself into his work with the arcane. How much he had tried to hone his skills on their journey so far. How sometimes, it seemed to really work; he'd practically shot the sun out of the staff when fighting off Sloane's vines. But when he'd lost control of the staff back at the lab, in front of Kravitz, and again today... He'd tried so hard to excel at magic, and he couldn't do that right, either.  

A sob left his mouth before he could bite it back down. Nothing he did was ever  _enough_ in the end. It was exhausting. He felt so alone, so empty, a failure to even himself.  _Why did Magnus and Merle even bring him along?_ The tears continued as he cringed through more sobs.  

Abruptly, a knock interrupted his thoughts. "Hey, Taako, you in there?"  

_Fuck,_ Taako cursed internally, bolting upright. He wiped his eyes in a panic. He reached up and tied his hair in a sloppy bun. "One second!" He called, trying to keep his voice steady enough to fake his usual aloof demeanor.  

Magnus paused on the other side of the door. "I can come back if it's not a good time, I was just-"  

Taako wiped a tear off his cheek in the mirror and cursed his eyes for being so red. "Nope, I was just getting changed. Stay right there." With the rest of his energy, he mustered up a spell to feign the appearance of a well-rested and white-eyed appearance. He crossed the room quickly and opened the door for his friend.  

"Sorry to interrupt. I just was wondering how everything went with Ango—hey, are you okay?"  

_What the fuck,_ Taako thought, glancing to the side to the mirror he had come from. With the spell, he looked totally normal.  

"Yeah, why wouldn't I be?" he tried to reason, but Magnus' question itself made his voice waver. "I'm fine, dude."  

"What's going on?"  

Taako took a deep breath in. There were three ways out of this: a lie, a half-truth, or the whole truth. Magnus was keen enough on reading him (clearly) that a lie wasn't going to cut it one-on-one. The whole truth was out of the question. He settled on half and cleared his throat.  

"You remember back at the lab, when I lost control of the umbra staff?" Taako asked. He was still using a great deal of his mental energy to keep the spell maintaining his appearance up as Magnus nodded thoughtfully. "Well, it happened again, while I was with Angus. It was a little.... unsettling. I don't want to be responsible for hurting the kid, you know?"  

"What happened?" 

The word was back, like it had been carved by scorching ray into his mind.  _LUP._ It was enough to unfocus him just enough for his spell to waver just enough for Magnus to catch a flash of puffy, red eyes before Taako composed himself once more. He tried to continue as if nothing had happened. "I—I don't know, it just--"  

"Taako." Magnus reached out and touched Taako's arm, stopping him mid-sentence. "Can you stop with the spell and just talk to me?"  

"I--"  

"It's really okay. It's okay if you're upset. You don't have to act like you're not, that's... I can totally understand why that's scary."  

Great. Now Magnus thought he was crying because he's just a shitty wizard. He wasn't too far off from the branch, but he was nowhere near the root. Part of Taako actually  _wanted_ him to be. But mostly, he just wanted Magnus to be a mind reader. He didn't want to have to hash out all the emotional and embarrassing details.  

Taako sighed, still keeping up the spell. "It's not that, really. I mean, yeah, I was worried for Angus but that not why..."  

"Taako..."  

With an aggravated sigh, Taako waved a hand and returned to his puffy-eyed, hunched-over self. "Happy now?"  

"I mean, no, I'm not happy that you're upset, but I think it's easier to talk this way."  

"Whatever."  

Magnus laughed just a little bit. "You can be mad at me. It's okay."  

Taako rolled his eyes and tried to focus, for once, on what he was feeling. His eyes kept drifting to the umbra staff, to the mirror, to the window at the endless inky blackness of the sky. Anywhere but Magnus. "Do you ever feel like you're missing a piece?"  

Taako immediately realized how  _stupid_ that question was. Of course Magnus knew this feeling. Of course. He was always missing his wife. Taako couldn't imagine that kind of grief. He'd never had to feel such a huge loss.  

"I'm sorry, that's a stupid ques--" 

Magnus waved a hand to stop him. "No, it's not. I know that feeling, and it's not easy."  

Taako swallowed, not understanding how Magnus could be so understanding with him. "Well I just... I don't know. It's dumb, you've been through hell and here I am," he sniffed. "Crying over, what, feeling a little lonely?" The admission only brought on a few more tears. "How foolish."  

"That's not dumb."  

"It is! It is dumb. I just feel so dumb, saying this to you." Taako laughed through his tears, sending a harsh laughing-cry through his chambers. The whole truth was coming out, as disjointed as it was, all at once. "I've always felt like this, for as long as I could remember. And I tried! I tried really hard to make up for it, in every way, but I can't even do that right. I just feel like a part of me is gone, and I can't find it, for the life of me. Not even in magic, and that's  _magic,_ for fuck's sake!" He laughed once again. "Defying the laws of everything, tampering in the mystical, and I still feel fucking sad. But hey, I can't even do that right, apparently. Nearly fried Angus' eyebrows."  

Magnus laughed a little with him, watching sympathetically as Taako wiped his eyes in frustration. "For what it's worth, you're better at magic than me."  

Taako laughed through tears. "Quite an accomplishment, Burnsides."  

Magnus paused. "Why do you think it's stupid to tell me this?"  

"Because you lost your wife. I haven't lost anything. I'm just... depressed, maybe. But I haven't got something  _big_ like that to cry over. It's an insult to you that I'd even suggest--" 

"I think we've all lost something, Taako. And we're all looking for it, in some way."  

Despite the cryptic nature of his words, Taako felt somewhat comforted. "Yeah, I guess that's true."  

Taako looked up at Magnus once more, noticing the tears that had pricked at the corners of his eyes. Taako had seen Magnus cry while they had been camped out a few times, but he'd never said anything about it. He wasn't much good when it came to comforting people, or relating to them emotionally. He tried to avoid conversations like these at all costs.  

Taako tried to make him laugh. "Hey, at least you'll always have a job as the team therapist, right?"  

Magnus laughed from his belly. It made Taako feel a little warmer.  

Taako couldn't help but throw a jab at himself in the process. "God knows why you guys keep me around."  

Magnus' smile fell to a frown. "Do you really think that?" When Taako took a seat on the edge of the bed and looked away, Magnus continued. "Hey, listen. Merle and I... we love you. We make an awesome team! Who else could we rely on to dunk on the bad guys? Sweet flips? C'mon, Taako."  

Magnus' usual puppy-dog demeanor wasn't as endearing right now as it usually was. He sighed and swallowed down more tears.  

"Okay. Fine, you're gonna make me be serious? You're not gonna like it." Magnus sat down next to him on the bed and thought in silence for a moment. "You're one of the most talented wizards I've ever met. You're really funny. You're fashionable, to a point where I'm a little intimidated. You keep us going when we feel like giving up. You always find a way out of situations that stump us. Taako, you're a really valuable part of our team. But more importantly than that, you're one of my best friends. And I haven't had a lot of those in my life."  

"Yeah,"  Taako piped up, feeling the need to reciprocate through the lump in his throat. "I feel the same way."  

"And like... I don't know. If you feel like there's a piece of you missing, we'll keep looking. We might not find it, but maybe we'll have a good time on the way."  

Taako's eyes drifted back to the umbra staff. He was either losing his mind, or while he had been distracted, it had shifted from leaning towards the doorframe to leaning against the coatrack that held his cloak. Hesitantly, he mirrored the staff's movement and leaned against his friend's shoulder.  

He sniffed. "Thanks, Mags." 

"Any time."  

 

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you thought, and hit me up on tumblr! @maegnus


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